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Kathy Zarur

Kathy Zarur is a curator, educator and arts organizer with a focus on the art and growing museum industry in the Middle East. She has co-produced numerous conferences, exhibitions and artist projects in the US and the Middle East.

Zarur was Artistic Director of Teaching Art of the Middle East and Islamic World, a two-day conference and pedagogy workshop held at the de Young Museum and San Francisco State University. She co-organized Zones of Representation, a conference and exhibition at SF Camerawork in 2016.

Her recent exhibitions include Project Landscapes: Objects, Collectives, Futures (with Roula Seikaly, SOMArts, forthcoming ), Where Is Here (co-curated with Jacqueline Francis, Museum of the African Diaspora, 2017) and Mashrabiya: The Art of Looking Back (co-curated with Santhi Kavuri-Bauer and San Francisco State University Fine Arts Gallery, 2017). She was Assistant Curator at the 2011 Sharjah Biennial. For the 2013 Sharjah Biennial, she co-produced a live installation with forty singers for artist Wael Shawky. In 2014, she co-curated an exhibition of artist books by international artists for a.Muse Gallery in San Francisco.

Zarur has published articles for Broadsheet and Art in America on Hassan Sharif, dubbed the first conceptual artist of the UAE, Wael Shawky, and a review of the exhibition Made In Palestine.

Zarur serves on Kearny Street Workshop’s Program Advisory Council and Arts for a Better Bay Area “State of the Arts” Steering Committee. She has served on the Collection Committee and Exhibition Committee for the Arab American National Museum in Michigan.

Zarur earned her PhD from the University of Michigan, where she also obtained a certificate in Museum Studies.